held it, while he said he should never dare go home without
visiting King Leopold's kingdom, and had a talk with an eighty-year-old
male flirt, who had a thousand chorus girls on his staff, and could give
the Sultan of Turkey cards and spades and little casino in the harem
game. "You will go along, won't you, bub?" and he gave my thumb another
twist, and I said, "You bet your life, but I won't do a thing to you and
Leopold before we get out of the Belgian hare belt," and so here we are,
looking for trouble.

It is strange we never hear more about Belgium in America, but actually
I never heard of a Belgian settling in the United States. There are
Irish, and Germans, and Norwegians, and Italians, and men of all other
countries, but I never saw a Belgian until to-day, and it does you good
to see a people who don't do anything but work. There is not a loafer
in Belgium, and every man has smut on his nose, and his hands are black
with handling iron, or something. There is no law against people going
away from Belgium, but they all like it here, and seem to think there is
no other country, and they are happy, and work from choice.

"Began to sell dad relics of the Battle of Waterloo."

I always knew the Belgian guns that sell in America for twelve
shillings, and kill at both ends, but I never knew they made things here
that were worth anything, but dad says they are better fixed here for
making everything used by civilized people than any country on earth,
and I am glad to be here, cause you get notice when you are going to be
robbed. They ring a bell here every minute to give you notice that some
one is after the coin, so when you hear a bell ring, if you hang onto
your pocketbook, you don't lose.

This is the place where "There was a sound of revelry at night, and
Belgium's capitol had gathered there." You remember, the night before
the Battle of Waterloo, when Napoleon Bonaparte got his. You must
remember about it, old man, just when they were right in the midst of
the dance, and "soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again," and
they were taking a champagne bath, inside and out, when suddenly the
opening guns of Waterloo, twelve miles away, began to boom, and the
poet, who was present, said, "But hush, hark, a deep sound like a rising
knell," and everybody turned pale and began to stampede, when the floor
manager said, "'Tis but the wind, or the car on the stony street, on
with the dance, let joy be unconfined, no